Vega will treat pARTy goers in 'Grand' style

JARED DENNISTON

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, April 5, 2005

When he immigrated to Houston in 1960, Vega found music to be one of the only familiar things left for him in a new, strange world. So, like any musician, he went around nightclubs armed with his faithful guitar, looking for a "gig" so he could earn some money and start living his new life.

"I arrived in Houston at seven in the morning," Vega said. "By 7 p.m. I was playing with a group in a nightclub."

Ever since then, Vega has been playing his guitar around nightclubs and restaurants throughout the Houston area. And during the May 7 "pARTy on Grand," Pearland's festival for resident artists, he will be showing people what he does best: entertain a crowd.

Currently a choir director at St. Helen Catholic Church, Vega has been playing music for 50 years, ever since he taught himself how to play a guitar by watching his father and brother play as they sat outside of his childhood home in Mexico.

Ever since, Vega has worked hard to add his own sounds to popular Mexican songs like "La Cucaracha" along with the songs that ended up on American pop charts such as "La Bamba." For Vega, creating a unique sound is the most important part of being a good musician.

"If you play like everyone else, you are nobody," he said. "But if you have your own sound, people will listen."

But getting people to listen is not enough for Vega. When his band, Los Dinamicos, gives a performance, he said that getting the crowd to take part in the show is also a big factor.

"When we sing, we make (the crowd) a part of our group," he said.

And for that reason, Vega has told members of the Pearland Arts League, the group organizing the "pARTy on Grand," that his band wouldn't need a stage or microphones for the May 7 event. Instead, his band will move around the crowd kind like a mariachi band without the trumpets, singing songs in both English and Spanish. The result, he said, will bring the crowd into the performance and will have them singing the tunes to some of the catchy songs he grew up with as a kid, listening to his father and brother playing them on the porch in Mexico.

"You would be surprised to know how many people know the words to those songs," he said.

As a participant in last year's event, Vega said he always looks forward to the event and sees it as an opportunity for other artists to gain some recognition like he did through years of playing around the Houston area. But above all, he said, he just wants people to have a good time.

"A festival is a festival. But when you put the music on front stage, that is really going to be something," he said.